UNITED KINGDOM, February 10, 2005: It all began when the Swaminarayan Hindu Community started worshipping at a small temple in North London. As the number of Hindus in Britain grew, plans formulated to build the largest Hindu temple outside of India. In 1992, the community purchased an old school site across the road from the Mandir and the first Hindu school in Europe opened its doors. The news release says, “The school is based on the traditional values of Hinduism – respect, compassion and moderation – and pupils are polite and focused, while teachers speak warmly of being able to teach without discipline problems. Visitors are greeted with ready smiles and class choruses of ‘namaste.’ The Hindu faith pervades the school, with ornate silver shrines in classrooms and Gujarati lessons on the curriculum, but this doesn’t get in the way of it being a mainstream school with a wide-ranging curriculum.”
Head of the school, Mahendra Savjani, says, “We are just like schools everywhere. Hinduism isn’t that prescriptive. It’s very open. But parents put their children here for the values. They are very happy to be here in Britain, but they don’t like a lot of the more unsavory things they see, the alcohol and drugs and promiscuity and way-out behavior. They want to preserve the language and the culture. This is a young community striving to find its way, and we are here to help that.”
The article explains the school’s success rate, “The school, which has just under 500 pupils, aged two-and-a-half to 18, has virtually 100 per cent of pupils getting five good GCSEs (one left early last year, spoiling the perfect figure), and gets a high ‘added-value’ score of 104 for pupils as they move from Key Stage 2 to Key Stage 3. One pupil has gone to Oxford, others have gone to Imperial College and Queen Mary College, in London, mostly to pursue science-based vocations such as medicine or engineering. Arts A-levels are less popular, except for those with their eyes on a future in law.” The school also has a cultural program where girls learn traditional Kathak dance, boys play tabla and others take singing and drama lessons.
Even though many of the teachers in the school are non-Hindus and it is not a requirement to be a devotee to attend the school, the life of the school is closely associated with the life of the temple. Pupils worship at the temple and two Swaminarayan sadhus are governors at the school. Savjani also points out that the school does not want to become an island in the middle of Neasden. The school works with the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts to get senior pupils to recite poetry and prose so that their English is comparable with other Britains.
Alison Witton, an Australian Year Six teacher, says, ” This is pretty much the best school I’ve ever worked in. The children are so polite, and so respectful of you as a teacher, and the parents are so supportive. They’re on your side if you ever have a problem, which you almost never do, and they help their children at home all the time. There’s a real work ethic, and it means as a teacher it’s much more fulfilling.”
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